TGU on timing and delay

Monday, May 3, 2021

4:10 a.m. So, this morning I awaken to the word “chetyre,” which is Russian for “four.” Russian, now? And what is it, an alarm clock?

We remind you, the workings of the things that surface in consciousness are not necessarily subject to reason, and rational explanation. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar – and sometimes whatever is going on has nothing to do with anything you need know or could know.

In any case, I am up and the coffee is brewing. So what is on your mind?

Delay. The delay inherent in influencing.

And why, may I ask, is this the topic du jour?

It needn’t be – it isn’t urgent – but it fits naturally with the discussion we have been having. Then we can go off to other things, if you wish, or you can take some time off.

You watched “The Spy,” and it influenced you.

It did. Very strong story.

But the events were of the 1960s, itself no insignificant delay. And more directly to the point, it took time for the story to be plotted, screen written, sold, casted, acted, post-productioned (if that is a word), distributed, etc. Nothing comes into existence in 3D without some delay, short or long. And after they come into being, the effect that they will have itself requires time for manifestation.

We’re talking about Papa’s Trial?

We’re talking about your entire career. Two cases in point: The Way Toward Health and The Sphere and the Hologram. The Jane Roberts book you are reading saw print only in 1997, a full dozen years after the sessions it recorded. And it is influencing you in 2021, another two dozen years’ delay. Your book – our book, we might say – was generated in 2001-02, put into print half a dozen years later, and is only now – another dozen years later – influencing the friend of your friend, as you learned yesterday.

Everything takes time. Delay is not a sign of failure (nor of success, of course), but is merely one of those 3D constraints that cannot be avoided.

So don’t worry about it.

That doesn’t mean “So you may sit comfortably, assuming that things will take care of themselves,” but yes, don’t worry about it per se. You know how much use worry is in any case.

Now, consider. You are re-reading Herndon’s Lincoln, reading The Way Toward Health, watching “The Spy,” etc. So many influences, created at wildly different times, blended in your own particular moment, just as, for instance, you read Adomnan on St. Columba, or Stoneback on The Sun Also Rises. It surely is obvious that no two people will be reading the same things at the same time.

For clarity, I get that you mean, not so much that no two people will be reading the same things at the same moment as each other (though this is no doubt also true), but that no two people’s mixture of elements will be the same, nor will they be added to the same previously constructed mental data base.

And it is obvious, is it not, that this must be so? Just as no two bodies can occupy the same time and space exactly, no matter how closely they may crowd in upon each other, so it is also true of minds. There will always be differences – and of course, there is nothing wrong with that. It is part of the design, not a flaw in execution.

Which reminds me of an old programmers’ joke: When you come across a problem you can’t figure out how to fix, you merely say it isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.

Yes, funny, but that isn’t what we are saying here. It is not some problem that can’t be fixed: It is one of the inherent reasons for 3D itself. It slows down and thus separates in time no less than in space. In giving you time to deal with things, it assists you.

All right, I see that.

So, there is a saying to the effect that you are given the face you are born with, but you have created the face you die with. You take this to mean – what?

The effect of a lifetime of choices is to be seen on our faces. That was the point of Oscar Wilde on Dorian Grey, after all: A man who succeeded in not showing the effects of his choices would mislead the world, because  we do judge others by what we see (or, I would add, feel).

There is of course more to that story, but yes, for our present purposes that will do. So how would you judge – what would you do for discernment – if everyone’s face were a blur of their condition at all their different ages? Hemingway was photographed uncounted times, but those photos are clear and informative only because each one was taken at one definite split second in time. They did not attempt a time-exposure over a day, let alone a month or a decade. Every bit of specific clarity obtained by any moment’s snapshot could only be blurred by superimposing another taken at another time., even if the pose itself were somehow identical.

As without, so within, No snapshot of your mind at any given time could be identical with another at another time.

It’s the same old story: We think of ourselves as more unchanging than we are or could be.

And that is the point of 3D life, after all.

So about influence, and delay?

We haven’t forgotten, but thank you for your concern. (We smile.) It is as we have said repeatedly, in many contexts: You cannot accurately judge your life, any more than you can accurately judge anyone else’s, because you can never have all the data. In your own case, you aren’t dead yet! There are more pages to write, so to speak. (Literally, Frank, in your case, but metaphorically as well, for everyone.) How can you weigh an uncompleted story? You might as well judge Moby-Dick on its first 25 or 50 chapters and think you’ve gotten the gist and everything else will be mere repetition.

But Lincoln, say, who has been dead more than a century and a half, is not necessarily transparent to you merely because lapse of time opened so many memories, and showed so many simultaneously occurring events physical and mental.

You never have all the data, and you might as well resign yourself to the fact. Life requires you to make judgments; keep them provisional and charitable, lest you go too far wrong.

Therefore, keep your judgments provisional, too, about what is going on in your life at this (or any given) moment. You do not and cannot know everything that is going on around you. You do not and cannot know what from your past is going to reappear and influence your present or future.

It’s all above our pay grade.

In the sense you mean that, yes. You are there to live your lives, not pretend to understand them, much less be able to accurately judge them. You can’t help judging, but, as we say, keep your judgments tentative, lightly held, provisional.

I can’t help but think there’s something more here to get.

If we haven’t said it explicitly, let us say it here: Be patient with your lives. Trust that they make more sense, and have more point, than you may sometimes think. No creature ever has so wide a view as its creator – and this has nothing to do with theology per se. it is just one more way of saying, “You never have all the data.”

And there’s your hour.

Our thanks as always.